


This Is Not a Puzzle or Mainframe

by deathwailart



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Masturbation, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:14:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i) Teme Pasta - bastard pasta. The previous bar owner before Pete was a woman who won it in a divorce from her Italian husband after he had an affair with a Japanese woman. It had once been a restaurant called Tempesta but it is now called Bastard Pasta.<br/>ii) The reference to Battlestar Galactica is about Six played by Tricia Helfer who is a very beautiful, tall, blonde. Google her.<br/>iii) Yes Priscilla is a male. He got his nickname when his mother, doped out after labour, said that was his name when the nurse asked and it stuck and became a joke once he got older. His full name is Paige Piper and he has a younger brother named Patrick who gets called Patricia.<br/>iv) Herbal Essences adverts. I’m guessing you’ve seen them. While Blair isn’t having that reaction, her moan is definitely on the loud side.<br/>v) Lynx deodorant is the most cheap, disgusting deodorant for men that there is and it’s generally marketed as though it’s practically pheromones. As said by Andy Parson on Mock the Week: “Lynx, for that cheap teenage scent of desperation.”<br/>vi) The teenagers in the off-licence are what we call neds up here (chavs down South). You can google them or ask about them here.</p></blockquote>





	This Is Not a Puzzle or Mainframe

Blair wakes up to the phone ringing, not aware of falling asleep in the first place and scrambles for it only to realise that the phone in question doesn’t even belong to her; it belongs to her neighbour and because it’s so quiet she can hear it. It rings and rings and she wants her neighbour to answer it because she hates unanswered phones but obviously her neighbour is out or ignoring it or unable to hear it so the machine clicks on and she hears a voice, female voice – sister or friend, girlfriend possibly going by the sound of it.

“So I guess you’re not here,” the voice is tinny the way all voices sound through machines and muffled through the wall, “but I’m ah, I’m going to have to cancel.” There’s a pause and Blair counts the beats and knows that the person on the other end is making up a story. “Something came up, I’m sorry Cam.”

The line goes dead and Blair stretches her arms above her head, getting up from the couch. Even if the caller doesn’t sound sorry, Blair does. As she walks through to the tiny kitchen she at least knows that her neighbour has a name that can be shortened to Cam.

\---

Blair lives in a one bedroom flat with a toilet that can be downright treacherous. It was marketed as a two bedroom but Blair only managed to fit a single mattress into it because the bed itself wouldn’t fit through the door so instead she keeps her clothes in it. The one night she did sleep in there on the mattress she had the distinct impression that she was going to hit her arms and legs off the walls if she rolled over in the night. The kitchen opens into the living room and she spends a small fortune in Febreeze and Glade Plug-Ins to mask any of the cooking smells. She has an oven, microwave, toaster, a gas hob because electric hobs are absolutely useless and a food processor all taking up her limited worktop space. She has mismatched cutlery and crockery and her pots and pans are the ones she got through offers at the local supermarket, stainless steel nightmares that are downright dangerous when the handles heat up as she cooks. Her table is circular and in need of varnishing and she has three chairs now after one finally broke. Another chair is on the way out she thinks because it has a wobbly leg and if she leans back in it gives the impression it’s about to give way. Her fridge is prone to leaking all over the floor at the drop of a hat but it keeps things cold and it has enough room for what little she puts in it so she can manage. Today the fridge looks particularly barren and something has dripped all over the place which, combined with vegetables starting to go mouldy, culminates in an unholy stench. She does however find cheese which has no blue spots and smells fine and two eggs so an omelette will tide her over until it’s time to go to work. She’s never been so thankful for twenty-four hour supermarkets because now she can do all her shopping when she gets off shift at the bar, free from gossiping arthritic old ladies and screaming children.

Omelette ready she sits down on her couch and sinks into the middle because the springs are really starting to go but she’s unwilling to part with the thing. It’s not particularly stylish but she’s had good memories of this couch and it’s comfortable and really, she doesn’t want to shell out for another one. The couch continues the theme from the kitchen in that nothing matches whatsoever; a chair her mum gave her when they got a new three piece suite and another chair taken from a front garden at four in the morning with Jake from work. She doesn’t have a desk as such and her old computer is just for storing her files and it sits, lonely and dejected, gathering dust in a corner. Her laptop fares better on a table with her iPod and DS and phones (landline and mobile) with a small stack of notebooks. In lieu of a filing cabinet she’s got a set of drawers against the far wall with a notebook detailing the contents of each drawer; any and all paperwork, stationary, odds and ends, work related matters, magazines. Above that she has the shelves she put up herself with the books she brought out of storage and a shameful amount of walk through guides for the various gaming systems she owns. The games themselves live alongside her CDs and DVDs by the television; if she didn’t spend so much on her entertainment she could probably save up for a better place but moving is a complete and utter bitch and she’s happy enough here even with the poky toilet that has a temperamental shower and that is so small she has her elbow jammed against a wall when she brushes her teeth. She doesn’t bother putting the TV on while she eats because she’ll need a shower and she enjoys the quiet, an advantage of working during the evenings although she generally doesn’t sleep long enough because the person above her sounds like an elephant, clattering and blundering around first thing in the morning doing what sounds suspiciously like step aerobics.

Blair works in a bar almost every night of the week and prefers to take her time off in small clusters so she can have a long weekend instead of a random day off. The bar isn’t much of a bar but her boss goes mental if anyone dares to call it a pub but really, it is. It’s a very classy pub with a couple of widescreens and Sky subscriptions, a jukebox and some fruit machines and a pretty good menu and Blair and the others on her shift are constantly pinching chips and salad whenever they have to go through the kitchens for any reason. Her boss, Pete, is built like a rugby player with the broken nose to go with it and there’s rarely any nonsense because he’s the one to put people out personally and anyone who does cause trouble either never returns or does so with their tail firmly tucked between their legs. The pay is okay but sometimes she works part time at the off-licence owned by Maggie, Pete’s sister and one of the most formidable women Blair has ever met in her life. There’s a rumour going around that they’re gangsters or that Maggie at least was married to one but Blair isn’t sure who to believe and she’d never ask Maggie anyway. If Maggie ever married then it wasn’t for love because Blair knows what Maggie likes and it’s never going to be a man; Blair isn’t strong and she’s consistently asked to bend over and lift heavy boxes when she’s working and in aisles that are plenty wide, Maggie’s always brushing up against her and she’s not a big woman in any sense.

She leaves her plate and fork in the sink along with the pan and runs the hot water as she goes to her bedroom to get a change of clothes for work and she’s just walking back through when the door to the flat next door slams and she listens as the message is played again before making as much noise as she can washing up because she doesn’t want to know more about her neighbours relationship or private life than she does about her neighbour in general.  
_  
One week later_

Blair gets home from work at four in the morning, arms laden with shopping and in desperate need of sleep. The bar – Teme Pasta, an in-joke that she doesn’t find all that funny and she can’t understand why Pete doesn’t change the name – had been heaving playing a football match she hadn’t paid attention to and she’d been run off her feet until the last person left. Thank god for the smoking ban though because she can breathe, her eyes still work and she doesn’t stink which is a good thing because there’s a woman creeping out of the next door flat as she fighting with her keys. Her high heels are clutched in her hand to make less noise and she looks terrified when Blair catches her sneaking out. They exchange an awkward whispered hello and Blair lets herself in and forces herself to put the perishables in the fridge. Everything else is dumped on the floor and she struggles out of her clothes and falls asleep in her underwear with the duvet half on. She’s woken not by Step Aerobics upstairs but by someone shouting next door and she remembers the woman in the dress creeping past her in bare feet, pointy heels clutched in one hand and then remembers the phone message she heard twice. She pulls the pillow over her head and sleeps in till lunch.

She doesn’t get up again till the clock reads eleven and she pours herself a bowl of Cocoa Pops – her mother banned sugary breakfast cereals once Blair hit puberty – and eats it wandering around the flat in her underwear, iPod on shuffle and picks up the post as she circuits past the front door. The cereal is done so she holds the bowl up to her mouth to finish it off. The bowl gets dropped in the sink and she thumbs through the post; junk, junk, bill, junk, bank statement, bill and then something for Cameron Gillespie. She sets it aside and gets ready for going down to the laundry room, gathering up the last of her dirty clothes, brushing her teeth and hair and throwing on some clean clothes. She sends a text to Pippa from across the hall because laundry is always more fun when she’s not down there on her own watching the machines and by the time she’s got everything gathered up Pippa has texted back saying she’ll be down in a few minutes. Blair slips her iPod, phone and DS into her pockets, picks up the laundry basket that for once isn’t heaving to the point of overflowing – she’s going to manage the weekly wash thing like an actual responsible adult for once – and, after a moment of hesitation, picks up the letter for Cameron Gillespie. She slides it into the letterbox instead of knocking because she feels guilty after putting together the message and the woman and the shouting.

Pippa greets her with a cup of coffee in one of those strange cups that keeps things hot, already dividing out her clothes in neat little piles, her underwear getting one all of her own. Blair’s usual style is darks, colours and whites but if she doesn’t have that much then it all gets crammed in together to save her time and money. Once she’s had her coffee she takes in what Pippa’s wearing – tiny little hot pink things that look like shorts but are actually underwear, over the knee socks and a black Jack Daniels t-shirt that’s been through the wash enough to start going grey. Pippa is, to put it mildly, a bit of a mental but that’s probably why they’re friends in the first place. Pippa has a crazy collection of DVDs and a brilliant stereo and Blair has the games so they alternate on who holds what night. Neither of them can honestly cook as well as they’d like so they usually pig out on crisps and take away and burn it all off on the Wii the next day.  
  
“My next door neighbour is Cameron Gillespie,” Blair announces as she kicks the door shut on the machine, hopping up to sit on top of it.  
  
“They moved in, what, three months ago?”  
  
“Four.”  
  
“Four months and that’s it? Know anything about the plumbing?” Pippa hops up onto the washing machine next to her and if she were maybe wearing a bra she’d look like a child. As it is, the bouncing is distracting.  
  
“Male. Possibly. When I got in from work some woman was sneaking out of there.”  
  
“Much to look at?”  
  
Blair shrugs and finishes her coffee and when she gets down to put it on the small table the landlord has for folding laundry her legs feel numb yet wobbly and she has to walk a little like John Wayne. “Not really my type but I see the appeal.”  
  
“So statuesque blonde then?”  
  
“Bang on the button.”  
  
“You have to be one of the only people I know who has a thing against blondes.”  
  
“After Battlestar I’ll always think of them as Six.”  
  
“You,” Pippa leans over and smacks Blair, “are touched in the head.”  
  
“Says the one who goes out in just her knickers and a t-shirt.”  
  
“I don’t need a bra,” Pippa huffs indignantly and folds her arms under her breasts which helps the bouncing but does nothing for her balance on top of an old washing machine that looks like it wants to make a break for freedom.

The rest of the time they spend on top of the washing machines is spent scrolling through Blair’s iPod and singing along badly with an earpiece each. Blair has an embarrassing amount of music her teenage self would have considered seriously uncool; Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Destiny’s Child. One of the older tenants in their building pokes their head around the door and shuffles away quickly and they must be a sight, singing on top of washing machines in not very much clothing. Eventually Pippa’s boyfriend shows up to help fold the laundry and they go back upstairs together, the three of them making plans to have coffee together at Gingerbread Ahoy at some point with a girls night (Halo and Thai) already arranged. Blair’s phone is ringing when she gets upstairs and she doesn’t bother shutting her door fully as she races for it.  
  
“Blair? It’s Pete, any chance you could switch shifts love only Max needs to work tonight instead of tomorrow.”  
  
“Sure,” she answers, kicking the front door shut.  
  
“Cheers love, Maggie wants to know if you’re available in the next few days.”  
  
“I can never say no to m’lady.”  
  
“You’re a star. See you the ‘morrow.”  
  
“Bye Pete.”

She leaves the phone on the table and puts her laundry away and realises that she has absolutely nothing to do today beyond some hoovering and dusting and she thinks that it’s maybe a little depressing that she’s honestly considering swinging around to the off-licence to kill some time. Instead she checks her purse and finds she has enough on her to go to Gingerbread Ahoy and grab a coffee and a cake or two. Priscilla will be working along with Spencer and she hasn’t seen them in a while. She thinks that maybe she needs a hobby beyond gaming because some people might call her a recluse but video games are far saner than step aerobics and right now she’s just not in the mood for a relationship. Yes, it’d be nice but she’s perfectly happy just being herself without worrying about pleasing anyone else and if she’s really brutally honest she doesn’t miss having to be so strict about certain aspects of personal grooming. The clothes she has on should be fine but she’ll definitely need a jacket because even though it looks nice it’s still cold outside. Scarf too but she should be fine without gloves if she keeps her hands in her pocket. She locks up and finds herself glancing at flat 33C before she sticks her headphones in, Henrietta playing and she skips down the stairs with a smile on her face.

\---

Spencer is on break when Blair orders and because Priscilla owns the cafe he takes a break too. Blair’s jealous of the pair of them; Spencer is nineteen, Priscilla twenty and they’re ridiculously in love. Spencer is the more outgoing of the two and about to start his second year of university studying English and history and a foreign language. It’s either Spanish or Italian, Blair never remembers. Priscilla is shy in a way that shouldn’t be endearing, tripping over his sentences unless he’s behind the counter and Blair likes to reach out and pinch his cheeks, poking the dimple he gets when he smiles.  
  
“You two make me feel impossibly old,” she says as she pours a third sugar into her coffee.  
  
“You’re only twenty-three,” Spencer points out and she really loves these two boys and how they look as though they’re playing at being grownups. There’s something settled about them even though their combined age is still below forty. They live in the flat above the cafe and when it’s a slow Sunday morning they dance around singing the Disney soundtracks together. Priscilla can actually dance and it’s when he’s at his least self-conscious, beaming and twirling the dishtowel he always carries.  
  
Priscilla pushes his glasses up his nose and asks about work and if Teme Pasta is going to be having another one of the dance nights. Blair tells him about the seventies night and his eyes go impossibly wide at the prospect and she’ll have to go along armed with a camera because she’s sure he can pull a John Travolta. They’ve all finished their coffees when Priscilla rushes off to the kitchen at the beeping of his watch, returning with muffins that have just come fresh from the oven. “They’re new,” he explains as he passes the muffins out. “Pumpkin, cinnamon and poppy seed so tell me what you think. And be honest. You’re too nice Blair and you,” Priscilla pokes Spencer in the arm, “are an absolute bitch about everything else food related unless it’s the things I come up from this place.”  
  
Blair tucks into her muffin and concentrates on not inhaling it when Spencer puts on his most wounded and indignant expression. “That’s because you’re a genius when it comes to all things baked but you ruin any and all meat you’re allowed to touch. Do you remember the Sunday roast when you parents were around last weekend?” He looks set to continue until Blair moans because the muffins are heavenly and not expressing her delight would be rude. “Are you having a Herbal Essences moment?”  
  
“Christ yes. You should never doubt your talents Prissy knickers.” Priscilla for once doesn’t do his tomato impression, settling on a pleased smirk and nibbling at his muffin. Spencer crams it into his mouth in one go and ends up choking, Priscilla lunging to his feet to pound him on the back.  
  
“I really can’t take you out in public can I?” His tone is long-suffering yet affection and Blair is envious for a moment before shrugging it off to just enjoy being around these two silly loveable man children.

\---

Later in the afternoon Blair goes the off-licence and Maggie puts her to work stacking the shelves and carding the underage locals who get very distracted by Blair’s cleavage. It’s the same group week after week who think that Blair doesn’t have a memory or brain in her head and their idea of chatting her up leaves her feeling sick.  
  
“Bloody great pukes,” Maggie mutters from next to her when they turn another bunch of underagers away (the idiots still in their school uniforms) with a glare, “greasy looking bunch and all.” Blair has to agree with that; hair that either looked as though it had had chip fat poured over it or with enough gel in it to set like cement and most of them had shiny faces with angry outbreaks of red spots around their hairlines. They don’t smell too great either with their mix of stale cigarette smoke and sweat barely covered up by the cheap teenage desperation of Lynx. They’d probably smell better without the cheap nastiness of the Lynx but because they’re teenage boys they no doubt believe the adverts and think that Blair will be stripping down to her skivvies and chasing them down the street.  
  
She makes an agreeing noise and goes back to the crossword she’s doing with Maggie, pointing to the row, “repugnant.”  
  
“Thanks. I’m surprised you’re here today.”  
  
“Thought I’d check and see if you needed a hand.”  
  
“You’re twenty-three; shouldn’t you be out with a man?”  
  
“I don’t like them,” she says lightly and drums her fingers on the counter when she feels the weight of Maggie’s gaze on her. She’s pretty sure Maggie won’t give a damn either way and it’d be bloody hypocritical of her if she did but there’s the same little thrum of nervousness in the back of her throat that she’s had ever since she first came to the realisation aged fourteen that she wasn’t malfunctioning or defective in some way.  
  
“I knew you were a lesbian.” She sounds triumphant and Blair hates her brain for going directly to the gutter. “Pete thought you liked both.”

She doesn’t really mean to but she starts laughing and Maggie joins in with her asthmatic wheeze that has more to do with the fact that she’s recently managed to kick a thirty a day habit. They’re still laughing when an attractive woman around Blair’s age walks in, hesitating as she regards them with wide eyes before heading to the wine section with her head down, dark hair lank and loose as though hiding her from the world. It’s easy to tell that she’s down in the dumps about something and she doesn’t meet Blair’s eyes when she serves her, plastering on a fake smile before hurrying out again.

“Just dumped that one,” is Maggie’s sage opinion on the matter and Blair agrees with her, leaning back to try and see where she’s going.

\---

That night Blair sits on the couch with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder with her legs stretched out so her feet rest on the coffee table, chattering away to Pippa as she plays Final Fantasy. She treated herself to fish and chips and she’s eaten far more today than she usually would in two but the unexpected night off has been fun and as Pippa says goodnight to her, the door to Cameron’s flat bangs open and shut and Blair hits pause when she hears the voice of a man clearly along with that of a woman, different to the one she heard over the machine a week ago. So Cameron is a man which is a perfectly normal thing but she’s a little disappointed which tells her that maybe she does need a girlfriend or at least a good shag in the not too distant future. Music floats through and she turns up the volume a little on her television and gets back to it, ignoring the laughter until it’s time to go to bed. She’s rarely in bed at such an hour and even though she’s full and sated and sleepy she has a hard time dropping off.

That’s when she hears her neighbour and their guest having sex which is equal measures of awkward and arousing and she slips her hand into her pyjama bottoms and underwear before she’s even realised what she’s doing and when the woman comes so does she, biting down hard on her bottom lip so that she doesn’t make any noise. It’s enough of a push to send her to sleep.

In the morning she wakes up to the sound of someone sobbing and has to force down the urge not to throw up.

Over the coming weeks, two of them to be precise, things fall into a familiar pattern. Blair goes to work and does her laundry, sees Pippa and Pippa’s boyfriend, goes shopping at Asda at obscene hours of the morning and spends her free afternoons giggling with Spencer and Priscilla or chatting with Maggie who she’s become far closer to now that she’s come out to her. It’s the same routine, more or less, that she’s had for the past year now. The only difference is that she generally comes home to Cameron having sex with someone and then crying in the morning and eventually it gets to the stage where she’s genuinely worried for this faceless person and so she leaves a muffin outside the door to flat 33C wrapped in Clingfilm and on one of the red paper plates she has for girly nights with Pippa along with a note:

_Hello, hope everything is okay and that you aren’t allergic to raspberry muffins (courtesy of Gingerbread Ahoy). Blair (Flat 32C)_

She’s not expecting anything but a few days later when she gets up there’s a note outside her door with a chocolate éclair on it.

**Hello, things are getting a bit better. Thank you very much for the muffin and please enjoy the éclair. Cameron (Flat 33C)**

It makes her smile and they settle into a routine of slipping little notes under the door complaining about Step Aerobics upstairs and Buggerlugs the landlord. It sometimes makes Blair wish her neighbour was a woman.

_Three weeks later_

The week has been horrible. The weather has been shit, she skinned her knee at work tripping up the stairs and she’s had the period pains from hell. To top it all off she’s now locked out of her flat, arms laden with shopping and the landlord, the stupid hopeless bugger, is busy and won’t be able to get the spare key or the locksmith any time soon. She’s sat in the hall and contemplating texting Pippa even though she knows she’s at work and that her spare key to Pippa’s flat is in the flat she’s currently locked out of when she finds herself crying into one of the muffins she bought. It’s such a stupid silly thing but being locked out of her home makes her feel small and frightened and more than a little helpless and she doesn’t notice the person standing next to her at first until a hand touches her shoulder.

“Hey, is everything okay?”

Blair looks up and finds a woman standing over her, taller than she is with dark brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail. She looks concerned but she’s still smiling and there’s an open warmth and friendliness on her face that makes Blair’s tears stop enough for her to speak. Blair thinks she recognises her for a moment but that could be because her vision is still blurred by the last of her tears.

“I’m locked out and the landlord won’t be here for another couple of hours yet.”  
  
“Do you want to come in?”  
  
“Are you sure that’s alright?”  
  
“Of course it is. I don’t think you’re the type to kill me and chop my body up and leave it in the bath.” Blair gives a shaky laugh and picks up her bags, muffin in one hand and she wipes the other on her jeans as she holds it out to the other woman.  
  
“I’m Blair,” she says as she’s directed into the flat.  
  
“I’m Cameron.”

**Author's Note:**

> i) Teme Pasta - bastard pasta. The previous bar owner before Pete was a woman who won it in a divorce from her Italian husband after he had an affair with a Japanese woman. It had once been a restaurant called Tempesta but it is now called Bastard Pasta.  
> ii) The reference to Battlestar Galactica is about Six played by Tricia Helfer who is a very beautiful, tall, blonde. Google her.  
> iii) Yes Priscilla is a male. He got his nickname when his mother, doped out after labour, said that was his name when the nurse asked and it stuck and became a joke once he got older. His full name is Paige Piper and he has a younger brother named Patrick who gets called Patricia.  
> iv) Herbal Essences adverts. I’m guessing you’ve seen them. While Blair isn’t having that reaction, her moan is definitely on the loud side.  
> v) Lynx deodorant is the most cheap, disgusting deodorant for men that there is and it’s generally marketed as though it’s practically pheromones. As said by Andy Parson on Mock the Week: “Lynx, for that cheap teenage scent of desperation.”  
> vi) The teenagers in the off-licence are what we call neds up here (chavs down South). You can google them or ask about them here.


End file.
